BY MATT MACKINDER
Clarkston News Staff Writer

Renaissance High School is introducing “Flexible Fridays” for the 2019-20 school year.
Alternative schools in the state can apply for a waiver allowing for a reduction in hours or days students are in class. The new schedule was approved by the Clarkston Board of Education at the Sept. 9 meeting.
“We went and visited the alternative education school of the year in Avondale during last school year, and looked at how they were doing this waiver and their Fridays looked like,” said Renaissance High Director Christa Fons. “They provided kids different enrichment opportunities, tutoring, things like that, part of being in the alternative education network of principles. “
The schedule includes a half day on Friday, while Monday through Thursday are still the traditional six core classes.
“We have a large population that had some pretty significant attendance issues, and we thought if we can increase our attendance Monday through Thursday for those core areas, and then Friday give the seniors an opportunity to go out in the community and work, and most of them do work,” Fons said.
The ninth, 10th and 11th graders will also benefit from the schedule tweaks.
“We’re looking at interventions,” said Fons. “If they’re not reading at grade level, we’re doing some testing (that started Sept. 20). We also want to see an increase of number of classes passed. We did a really deep dive into the data and saw that quite a few students, probably about 20 percent of their classes taken were being passed. We want to really increase our pass rate and decrease our fail rate so that kids are getting more credit and they’re being more successful.”
Students will also be able to track their progress and grades with an online system.
“I think it’s going to be advantage in many different ways,” Fons said. “We’re going to focus a lot of social emotional learning on Friday.”
Aside from academic continuity, Stacey Youngerman, guidance counselor at RHS, said the environment at the school goes beyond grades and lessons for students.
“Being a smaller environment, we really have the opportunity to get to know them,” said Youngerman. “That’s what’s important. We’re not just educating them on the academics, we’re trying to learn about them as a whole person. So when you really take the time to get to know somebody, they can focus a little bit more when we put them back into the classroom. Some of our students don’t have a stable home, so they don’t have that person to talk to at home, but if they come here, and they know that they can get a meal or have a conversation with somebody who truly cares, I will listen to them.”
One consideration was what to do with the 12-14 freshmen at Renaissance on Friday afternoons, Fons said.
“We are working with some community members and talking about having volunteer experiences for them,” she said.
The program may continue next year, but Renaissance will be required to report success rates to the state to get further approval.
“This is going to be data driven,” Fons said. “To continue this flexible schedule next year, we’re going to look at, hopefully, having a significant decrease in absences and a significant increase in class success rates or credits earned.”
Data will include surveys of students, parents, and teachers, she said.
“We’re mostly seniors – that’s what our typical demographic is,” said Fons. “Our seniors have the opportunity not to come in on Friday. However, they do have a checklist we call the senior checklist. We want to make sure we’re looking at both their career readiness and their college readiness so they have a plan and our students leave with a future that excites them.”